Until I Rest
by TheJesusFreak777
Summary: In District 2 the Games are a way of life. Children are trained from a young age to win the Games or become Peacekeepers. When the murder of a girl preparing for the Games rocks the lives of those at the training center, one person sets out for the truth-and revenge-at any cost. Prequel to Nevermore, but can be read separately.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Hello! For those of you who don't know what this is, it's a sort-of prequel to my story _Nevermore._ However, you don't have to have read it before this one. Please read and review!

* * *

 **District 2 Career Training**

 **Advanced Class, Year of the 71st Games**

* * *

 **Trainers**

 **Iago Roberts, Victor of the 46th Hunger Games, also father of Oline Roberts**

 **Eria Albany, Victor of the 59th Hunger Games**

 **Quartz Penick, Graduate of the Training Center, current Peacekeeper**

 **Aleksander Ettison, Graduate of the Training Center, current Peacekeeper platoon leader**

* * *

 **Students, according to current rank**

 **1\. Solomon Hart-male, blonde-brown hair, blue eyes, white. 18.**

 **2\. Parish Avinsday-male, blonde hair, blue eyes, white. 17.**

 **3\. Terrin Kettle-female, brown hair, brown eyes, black. 18.**

 **4\. Emilia Chaney-female, brown hair, brown eyes, white. 17.**

 **5\. Io Finnigan-female, blonde hair, blue eyes, white. 16.**

 **6\. Josias "Ziggy" Hunt-male, black hair, brown eyes, black. 16.**

 **7\. Oline Roberts-female, black hair, green eyes, olive skin. 16.**

 **8\. Lori Toleen-female, brown hair, gray eyes, olive skin. 17.**

 **9\. Saul Arrison-male, red hair, blue eyes, white. 15.**

 **10\. Andrei Wilkins-male, black hair, brown eyes, black. 16.**

 **11\. Maria Nolan-female, red hair, blue eyes, white. 16.**

 **12\. Marcie Nolan-female, red hair, blue eyes, white. Maria's sister. 16.**

 **13\. Basset Moses-male, brown hair, brown eyes, white. 15.**

 **14\. Nero Slate-male, black hair, brown eyes, white. 17.**

 **15\. Ezra Gardner-male, black hair, green eyes, white. 15.**

 **16\. Scioto Heallens-female, black hair, brown eyes, black. 17.**

 **17\. Roland Delfuenso-male, brown hair, brown eyes, white. 15.**

 **18\. Talia Rowan-female, black hair, blue eyes, white. 16.**

* * *

 **1.**

 **Ezra Gardner**

 _My ears were ringing._

 _We were under hundreds of thousands of tons of rock, breathing in the stale air of our own tomb. There was no way we would ever see the sun again or breathe fresh air._

 _I covered my nose and mouth with my shirt and swiftly took in my surroundings. Dust filled the alcove and there was no sign of light. It was impossible to tell if another explosion would rock the Nut. Not five feet away from me Quartz laid on her stomach, her white Peacekeeper uniform dirtied from the dust and her head scraped and bleeding. A thin stream of blood trickled out of her mouth and puddled on the floor. I tried to stand but a wave of nausea knocked me to my knees and I vomited the contents in my stomach up. I crawled on my knees and hands to her. "Quartz," I rasped._

 _She didn't stir, didn't show any sign of life._

 _"Quartz!" I rolled her over onto her back, my head spinning. The shrill ringing was still reverberating in my ears. "Wake up, damn it!" I pressed a finger to her carotid on her neck and swore. No pulse. I tilted her chin back and began to do chest compressions. There was no change in her pulse. Head swimming, I put my mouth on hers and breathed, trying not to focus on the blood pooling around her._

 _Nothing._

 _More chest compressions. I swayed unsteadily over her body as I tried to revive her. I fell, head spinning, across her. I tried to move back on my knees and slipped again, my face scraping on the stone floor. "I'm so sorry," I gasped, chest shuddering for breath. "I'm so sorry." I wadded my shirt and covered my mouth, my eyes burning. I waited thirty seconds, sixty seconds before attempting to move again. This time, I made it back into a crawling position and managed to make it to the wall beside Quartz's head. I leaned against it and wheezed into the cloth._

 _Quartz had been beautiful once, but now I gazed at her emaciated body. I was going to be next. I wondered if everyone else would die, too._

 _I didn't realize until then that I was crying._

* * *

 _ **Four Years Earlier**_

It was cold.

Cold was a light way of putting it: the air rolling off the mountains above was biting, the rain was freezing into sleet, and the bag in my hands was heavy and kept slipping in the mire, and when I reached down to grab it my hands would find icy brown mud. I swore.

"Hey," Marcie called from where she watched under the shelter of the roof eave. "Who died?"

"Some bastard from the class behind us." I kept my voice level, and Saul nodded, his eyes fixated on a point above my shoulder.

"Who killed him?" Scioto asked. She was shivering in the cold, the rain coming down right on top of her. There was no more room left under the eave for her. Or for me, for that matter.

Saul met my eyes as he hauled the other end of the bag. Saul had the feet. I had the head. "Dunno," Saul answered.

"You sure?" Andrei scoffed.

"They probably did it," Talia said loudly with a snort. "Wouldn't put it past them trying to go up in rank."

"Shut your damn mouth, Talia," I snapped. "You're ranked last now, so you'd probably murder us all in our sleep if you thought you would move up."

The crowd under the eave snickered. Saul grinned.

"Where's the grave?" I asked.

"I think we have to dig it still," Saul answered.

"Are you serious?" I hissed. "The ground's frozen. We don't even have shovels."

"You think we'll get any points for this?" he mused. We were out of earshot of the others. My foot sank into a hole as we hauled the body bag, and cold mud slid inside between my toes. With a shudder I dropped my end.

"This looks like as good of a place as any," I said.

"Okay," Saul agreed. "What are we digging with?"

"Our hands?" I suggested.

"That'd be really ineffective."

"Arrison, Gardner," a hard voice called. It was Eria. She held a shovel in each hand and shoved them towards us. "Make sure you bury him deep enough that the rain doesn't wash him out."

"The ground's frozen," I objected.

"See if I care," she retorted. "And you're not to talk to the others about any of this."

Saul ran a hand through his dirty red hair but said nothing. Sullenly I stared back at her.

"Don't just fucking stand there," she snapped. "Are you going to tell the others about this?"

"No ma'am," we muttered. She eyed us contemptuously for several seconds before turning back to the gray stone building. "You lot!" she shouted to the others. "Get inside or you'll be the next one to be buried!" The words usually held no weight; behind her rough exterior, Eria was pleasant enough, if not a tad bitter. I wouldn't have thought any more of it, if a body hadn't appeared in the quarters that morning.

As she strode away and the others moved to follow her, Saul turned to me. "Jesus Christ, Ezra, did you see her face?"

I nodded.

"I bet Roberts did it," Saul said brazenly, digging his shovel into the earth.

"Oline?"

"Iago."

"Come off it," I scoffed.

"I'm serious!" he protested, shooting me a filthy look. He pushed the mop of greasy red hair out of his eyes. "You don't think he'd try to give Oline an advantage?"

I snorted. "Yeah, whatever."

"So who else would want to kill her?" he mused. "It's not like she died in a training exercise-that would be different."

"Maybe Parish," I said, thrusting clumps of dirt over my shoulder. "Is this deep enough?"

"No. And why the hell would Parish want Emilia dead?"

"How should I know? Maybe he knew she was going to be recruited."

"She was?" Saul looked up, interested.

"No. I don't know."

The sleet steadily fell and water collected at the bottom of the pit we dug. Furiously I rubbed my hands together, friction causing warmth to bloom in my palms. At last, when both of us decided that we'd had enough of the weather, we lifted the bag from the side and heaved it into the ditch. It landed with a thud, the plastic rippling in the wind. Inside was the butchered body of Emilia Chaney.

"At least she didn't stink yet," he said, wiping his hands off on his shirt. "God. I hate this."

"What?"

"Touching a body. It's unclean."

"You're trying to get in the Games, aren't you?"

"Yeah, but the hovercraft gets it then."

Burying the body took half the time that digging the grave had. Mud squelched under my feet. We fell into a reiterating, jejune pattern: pick up dirt, throw dirt onto the body, pat it down, stretch, and again and again, covering someone else's crime with filth.

"How much you want to bet that they know who did it?" Saul said, jerking his head to the building.

"Who?"

"The trainers. God Ezra, you can be so dense."

"Don't know if they would care much about hiding it from the rest of us."

"Everyone likes Emilia, though. Liked, not likes. You don't think they'd be afraid of Parish going rogue?"

"No. It's not like he could do anything, either. They'd just shoot him."

"But they like the rivalry between him and Solomon. It entertains them."

"It's entertained them for what, six years? They'll put an end to it. And Solomon's always been on top. They won't hesitate to shoot him. And I seriously doubt that Parish would riot just because Iago killed Emilia."

"So you do think it's Iago?"

"No."

"As if Parish is somehow more believable to have done it," Saul snorted.

My shoulders were aching. "Parish is insane. I wouldn't put it past him." Last year I had watched, dumbstruck, as Parish beat the hell out of a boy in the training center with nothing more than his own hands. I hadn't missed the admiration in Quartz's eyes, either. It had been enough to make my stomach turn. Three days later the boy had died in the infirmary.

Saul shrugged. "I doubt it. Bet it was Iago."

"It won't take till the end of the evening for the others to figure out," I said. There was a blister on the heel of my hand. "That it was Emilia, I mean. What's Eria want us to do about that?"

"Dunno. It's not like we know anything more than the others."

"I guess."

The grave was full of frozen soil. It was done.

"We'd better get points for this," Saul muttered.

Eria was waiting for us at the door. She took our shovels and jerked her head towards the quarters. "Go. You're not to talk about how you found her." Her voice was a fierce whisper. "You're to say that I found her, and that you were the first ones Iago and I saw. Understood?"

We nodded. She watched us as we went, her eyes boring holes into our backs. I slid open the door to the quarters and slipped inside, Saul behind me. "Would it kill her to take a day off sometime?" he muttered to me. I grinned, but my smile faltered when I saw the others lounging around.

"I thought you were training," I said.

Ziggy shook his head. "Nah. They said to-to take the day off."

"They're busy with whoever died," Maria added.

"Oh. Yeah," I said lamely.

Io yawned. "Any idea who it was?" She sounded bored.

"No clue," I lied. Saul shrugged.

They hadn't even noticed Emilia was gone. Emilia, who was everyone's favorite. She had been friendly, unlike most of the others. We knew that one day, either in the Games or in training, we would have to face off eventually. But none of that had seemed to bother her. And they didn't even realize she was missing.

Over six years only five in our class had died. Two from pneumonia, two from training accidents, and one died from injuries after a fight-the one Parish had killed. Now six were dead.

Emilia's bloodstained mattress was gone and replaced with an identical but clean one. No one would notice a thing if they hadn't been there to see her corpse on it.

I laid on my bunk and closed my eyes. Maybe I could make sense of it all in the morning.

* * *

"Where's Emilia?"

The sentence jolted me from my sleep. I struggled to sit up, my arms aching and sore. It had been, rather unsurprisingly, Parish who had asked.

"What time is it?" I muttered to Saul, who sat on the bunk opposite of mine.

"Ten," he answered. "In the evening."

"Where's Emilia?" Parish repeated, his voice louder this time. His gaze swept across the group, curious.

"I haven't seen her all day," Terrin said, unconcerned. She glanced towards her bunk. "Eria said she was in the infirmary."

"She's not hurt, though," Andrei pointed out, frowning.

"Probably pneumonia," Scioto murmured. "She's been coughing."

I bit my lip. Pneumonia. What would they do if they knew Emilia had been stabbed through? Saul glanced at me, clearly nervous.

The door slid open. It was Quartz. She looked utterly exhausted, her usual static demeanor gone. "Lights out," she said. "Girls, to your side."

"Where's Emilia?" Parish demanded, crossing his arms across his chest. I watched him warily. He could have easily killed her. They had fought bitterly yesterday.

"The infirmary," she answered automatically. "Now, lights out. Get some sleep. Big day coming up."

"What?"

"You'll see." Her eyes flickered over Saul and I. She closed the door behind her and flicked off the lights. For a moment everything was still, and then I heard Io say, "Wonder what that meant."

"Emilia isn't in the infirmary," Parish said. His voice was quiet but everyone was silent, listening. "It doesn't make sense."

"If she has pneumonia-"

"She doesn't have pneumonia, she had a-a cough." My eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness, and I could make out his outline as he stood. "Ezra and Saul buried her today," he accused, swiveling to glare at us.

"What? No way!" Maria exclaimed, ripping aside the curtain that separated the girls' bunks from ours. "No way is Emilia dead."

Parish crossed his arms and glared at Saul and I. I fidgeted uncertainly.

Saul cracked almost immediately. "Okay-it was Emilia."

"You have _got_ to be shitting me!" Io exclaimed. She sat down beside Nero and turned to watch us intently.

"I'm not."

"What happened?" Parish demanded. His eyes were bright with tears but he quickly blinked them away.

"Eria and Iago asked us to bury her."

"How did she die?"

"Don't know," I answered, before Saul spilled the beans on what really happened. "They didn't tell us anything."

"I don't believe you," Parish said, deadly quiet.

"Ask Eria, if you want to know," I retorted.

Parish lunged at me, and before I had time to react, he had slammed me against the wall. "What happened to her?" he snarled. His elbow jammed painfully into my throat.

"Don't-know," I gasped.

He dropped me. A few people snickered. I rubbed my throat and glared at him.

"I don't believe you," he repeated.

* * *

Saul and I had found her lying on her mattress, blood soaking the sheets and bed and her clothes. There had been a wound in her chest, right at her heart. It had been hard to tell how long she had been there for. An hour, at the most. She was very dead when we found her, her chest split open and dead eyes staring at the ceiling. I had ran to find one of the trainers, and Eria and Iago had been drinking coffee in an office. Neither had seemed surprised when I mentioned a murder-they happened here every few years-but Eria was startled when I told her it was Emilia, the most popular in our class.

Aleksander had came next, and he had locked the door to the quarters and we examined the scene. He made a call to his superior, because Emilia had been selected to be a Peacekeeper. That was the purpose of the training center: to determine who would volunteer for the Games, and then the Peacekeepers had their pick with the rest. Aleksander swore at Eria and Iago before calling in Quartz, who had taken care of burning the mattress and sheets.

"Bury her," Iago ordered.

"What?"

"Bury her. Outside in the field. We can't have a body in here stinking the place up."

"Don't we need to know who did it?" Saul protested.

"Yes, and we'll figure it out. Do as you're ordered."

"But what about-"

"I'm beginning to think it was you two," Iago snapped. "Now, bury her before we have to bury you."

We had fallen into a sullen silence, mostly due to our mutual terror of Iago, and did as they told us. Eria watched the entire time with a cigarette rolling between her fingers. That was what she spent her wealth after winning the Games on: cigarettes and booze. She didn't know any more than us who killed Emilia, but she hid her interest better than we did.

And now Emilia was dead and buried in the field.

I tried to shake the thoughts of her corpse out of my head. With her gone, Io and Terrin would fight brutally to claim a spot in the Games, and the rest of us would go after the position she'd filled as a to-be Peacekeeper.

 _"You can't tell anyone about her being selected,"_ Eria had said. _"She hadn't even known herself."_

She was dead. It didn't matter.

Io glanced over Saul and I, then Parish, clearly apprehensive, before returning to her end of the quarters. The curtain was pulled back over. Within minutes, snores filled the room.

I sighed and closed my eyes. Maybe we would get an explanation in the morning. Maybe we would make sense of it then.


	2. Chapter 2

_We live in cities you'll never see on screen_  
 _Not very pretty, but we sure know how to run things_  
 _Living in ruins of a palace within my dreams_  
 _And you know, we're on each other's team_

 _-Team, Lorde_

 **2.**

* * *

 **Ezra Gardner**

 _We were being held under siege._

 _That's what it was. Every Peacekeeper the Capitol had were buried underneath a mountain, the rebels blowing the roof down and trapping us, the air too polluted to breathe. We were all going to perish down here, the breath stolen from our lungs._

 _I had lost track of time. The ringing in my ears had finally stopped, but I had no idea how much damage had already been done to them. Had that been hours ago? It was night, that much I knew. There was a small chink in the collapsed roof that filtered in silvery light, illuminating little more than a patch of cracked wall. I found a flashlight on Quartz's belt-I had set mine somewhere just before the explosion-and flicked it on to take in my surroundings. For a heartbeat I couldn't make sense of any of it, but then I understood what I was seeing. A ventilation shaft had collapsed but its metal was still in one twisted piece, holding back the fallen mountain. A support beam fell perpendicular to the shaft, supporting it. It wouldn't take much for it to all give way. On the far side of the alcove I saw another body, and farther down a pair of legs stuck out from a heap of rubble._

 _"Saul?" I called, taking the wad of cloth away from my mouth to give the briefest of messages. "Are you in here?"_

 _There was no reply. I exhaled into my shirt, my lungs hungry. I was going to die here. I was never going to make it out to see Maria again. I was going to die. Throughout all of my training, all of the Peacekeeper duties, even when the Mockingjay sent the whole of Panem into turmoil and we were exchanging fire with our own brothers and sisters, nothing seemed more certain than this. We were already in a crypt. The thought made me breathe faster and faster, wasting precious oxygen, until I was gasping, my head spinning, my hands shaking against my mouth._

 _If the rebels didn't try to kill us again-and they would most likely succeed if they did-, the air would kill us. And if the air didn't kill us, then thirst and starvation would. I was going to die, just like Quartz, just like the body on the other end of the alcove, just like the poor soul buried under rocks with just his legs out. I hoped it had been fast for Quartz and the others. It certainly wouldn't be for me._

* * *

 _ **Four Years Earlier**_

The morning alarm went off at six sharp, the same time it always did. Everyone grudgingly rose together and prepared for the day. I didn't miss Roland throwing a look in my direction, his eyes dark with suspicion, before turning to follow Parish out the door into the hall. Andrei and Basset followed him without so much as glancing at Saul or me.

As soon as they were gone, Saul's face deepened into a scowl. "'Yes Parish, you are our lord and savior. Where you go, we will go,'" he mocked, his voice monotone and robotic. "You think they ever think for themselves?"

"I'd be careful who you say that around," Io replied tartly.

"Last time I checked, everyone here hates them as much as I do," Saul answered cheerfully.

"And last time I checked, Iago loves Parish," she pointed out. "I bet he'll pick him to volunteer," she added, lowering her voice as Solomon and Terrin headed out into the hallway.

"Not Solomon?"

"Solomon isn't insane," she said flatly. Then she grinned. "The Peacekeepers probably already have him picked."

"I wonder who they have picked," Saul said, a note of envy in his voice. I kept quiet. Eria had told me about Emilia's selection when Saul hadn't been paying attention. "Does anyone know when we find out?" he continued. "It has to be soon, right? Before the Reaping, so none of us tries anything stupid?"

"Casca told me he found out the March of his last year," Io said, referencing her Peacekeeper brother.

"I'd rather go to the Games than be a Peacekeeper," said Saul.

"Why?"

"You have to be celibate," he said, wrinkling his nose. "And not in the bachelor way. For twenty years."

"Are you that horny?" Io asked with a snort.

"No. But I want kids, is all." I wrinkled my nose. I couldn't imagine having kids in Panem. The Capitol fed us well enough, but only because of the Peacekeepers. If we lived in the quarries, a fate destined to most, we'd be starving.

We headed down the hall to the training room. Eria, Iago, Aleksander, and Quartz were already all present. Eria met my eyes. Hers were cold. I shifted mine to the floor.

"Is everyone here?" Aleksander asked.

"Yes." It was Iago who answered. He stood in a corner, his arms crossed over his chest and his unfriendly eyes scanning us. They rested on Oline briefly before he sighed and took a few steps to stand beside Aleksander. He dwarfed the Peacekeeper. It didn't take much imagination to figure out how he had championed the 46th Hunger Games. "You're here for the details on your final training exercise of the year."

"Where's Emilia?" Parish interrupted. I noticed his fists clenched in his lap.

"She's dead," Eria answered bluntly. "Listen to Iago."

Iago fixed Parish with a piercing glare. We had watched a recap tape from his Games a few years ago. He had been ruthless. He'd broken up the Career pack-it had been down to eight, and there had been three Careers left. Immediately after they'd killed a potential threat from District 6, he had turned and skewered the boy from 1 with a spear. Apparently it had been such a twist that half the sponsors in the Capitol sought to have him killed and the other half fought for his protection in the arena.

Iago glared at Parish for several more heartbeats before turning to the rest of us. "As I was saying, this will be the last major training exercise before the Games. Some of you are what, fifteen? Sixteen? Some of you might stay another year or two. Same if you're seventeen."

"In a few months," Eria said, "two of you will be heading to the Capitol. Some of you will be drafted by Aleksander and Quartz for the Peacekeepers. The rest of you will go and do whatever the hell it is you can in 2. Probably the quarries." That word was enough to send a shudder down my spine. Eria smiled. Clearly my feelings were reciprocated by others here, because she continued. "No one wants to go to the quarries for the remainder of their life."

"Some of you won't return from this exercise." Iago, again. "You'll spend a few weeks out in the woods and whoever's left when we come back is who will be selected from."

"That sounds easy enough," Lori said.

"Glad to hear," Quartz replied. "You will get no food, weapons, or water. The nearest civilization is eighty miles away. You can leave if you want-walk all the way to wherever the hell it is you want-and quit training for good. That's an option."

"Who'd be stupid enough to do that?" Io muttered quietly behind me. I glanced at her. Her blue eyes were bright with excitement. For some reason I didn't share it. Maybe it was because we had just buried Emilia yesterday and she had already been selected as a Peacekeeper.

Why were they lying? Why were they making us go on a training exercise if they'd already had at least Emilia picked out? They had to have others picked out already. Unless they were figuring out her replacement, or if they hadn't picked the volunteers yet. But if they'd had Emilia selected, they had to have others, right? And why risk losing them in the wilderness, from the way Iago talked? It made about as much sense as the gibbering beggars that camped out beside the Mayor's mansion a village over.

I knew full well that I would be sent to the quarries if I wasn't selected-which I wouldn't be. Not this year, at least. Maybe by the time seventeen rolled around I would still be here, and ready to volunteer or become a Peacekeeper. Solomon would be the volunteer or a Peacekeeper this year-I couldn't tell which yet. He had a level headedness and cool temper that was ideal for leadership, and he loomed over everyone, even Iago, his great hulking shoulders and height intimidation enough.

If Solomon wasn't the volunteer, it would be Parish. He used savagery as a weapon and was cunning and clever enough to outfox the snooty, rich District 1 tributes, who always seemed to think District 2 was a dirty, filthy hovel underneath them. I'd seen it with my own eyes on the televisions we watched the Games on in the training center.

The past two years had been back-to-back District 1 victories; a pair of conventionally beautiful siblings. Last year it had been down to the sister and the boy from 9. They had fought bitterly, him using his weight and speed to his advantage. Everyone had thought she would die: she had been stabbed through the gut and she barely held her intestines in with her hands, her innards spilling through her fingers like wet clay. The boy from 9 had stepped back, waiting for her to succumb to her wounds. He was letting her go slow, to suffer, as he panted for breath. His stepping back had been his fatal mistake: his foot fell on a snare set by the girl from 5. Her snares had killed two other tributes before she had been killed. As soon as he tripped the snare, a massive, heavy oak bough fell and crushed him, killing him instantly.

During the Victory Tour, the girl from 1, Cashmere, had stood arrogantly on the stage in front of the Justice Building. She seemed to forget that she'd lost her guts in the middle of the woods one night six months ago. Eria told us that she prostituted, like Finnick Odair.

"You leave tomorrow," Aleksander said. He was shorter and younger than Iago, had none of Oline's father's lankiness and agility, but was as formidable and almost as menacing. "Bright and early."

Eria nodded. "We're under no impression that all of you will come back. Only half of my class made it back."

So they had done this before? What the hell was the point in picking out Peacekeepers before training was completed?

"When you get there," Quartz began, "you'll un-"

"That's enough," Iago said sharply. He was the oldest of the trainers, in his forties. He fixed Quartz with a hawkish glare. He glared a lot.

You'll understand... That's what Quartz had been going to say. Understand what, exactly? What had Iago stopped her from saying? It showed one thing, at least. Quartz knew about the expedition and what it entailed, probably from her own experience on it. She was only twenty, not much older than us. She flirted with the older boys-Parish, namely, and Nero-and once just a few months ago on one of our days off I had stepped into the quarters and caught her kissing Solomon. Solomon had broke their embrace when he saw me. "Get out, Ezra!" he yelled, and Quartz had burst out laughing, and then they had went back to kissing as I slipped back out.

Later that day Solomon had found me in the mess hall. He slid into the bench beside me and said lowly, "Don't tell anyone."

"How long have you been screwing Quartz?" I asked, swallowing my dinner. I turned to face him.

He stared at me, his mouth gaping open for a millisecond. He looked away. "It doesn't matter. Just promise me you won't tell anyone. Especially not Oline."

"Why would I tell Oline? Why don't you want Oline to know?"

"I don't know why you would tell Oline. But she might tell Iago."

I raised an eyebrow. "Iago doesn't know?"

"No," he hissed. "And I'd like to keep it that way."

"Is she helping you get points? Is she helping your rank?" I demanded.

"No."

"If you knew anything, you'd know better than to go after a trainer," I said.

His eyes flared with anger. "She could lose-" He'd broken off as Parish and Emilia walked by, the two of them chatting amiably. He lowered his voice. "She could lose her job. Or be relocated to another district. Or made an Avox."

"What the hell is an Avox?"

"Eria told me about them. They're slaves in the Capitol. They have their tongues cut out. The point is you can't tell anyone."

"So you're protecting her?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"You care that much about her."

"Hell. What is this, some kind of interrogation? Yes, I care, if you ask. So promise me that you won't tell."

"I won't tell."

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely. But I don't think Oline would tell Iago even if she knew," I added. "Don't think they really get along."

"You're kidding. Have you even seen them? She eats her meals with him. Everyone thinks he cheats her, for her rank," he added quietly, his voice dipping again. "You can't tell anyone. They'll think she's helping me cheat. And she's not," he added defensively when I opened my mouth. "I swear she's not."

"I won't tell anyone," I promised. "Besides, I don't think you're the only one sleeping around." I jerked my head towards Parish and Emilia, who were still talking a few tables over. Parish was smiling. I could barely believe my eyes.

"Who? Them?"

"You haven't noticed?"

"Well." He scratched his neck, uncomfortable. "I guess I have, yeah."

"You guess," I said with a snort.

"I'd rather not get on Parish's bad side," Solomon answered flatly. He glanced towards where he and Emilia still chatted.

"You're scared of him."

"Not scared," he corrected. "It'd just be a waste, that's all. I like Parish. Respect him." He stood and stretched. "Thanks Ezra. I owe you one."

Now, sitting in the training room and watching Iago reprimand Quartz for trying to say something that could potentially help us, my eyes flicker to Solomon, who has never been good at hiding his emotions. When we would play card games in the quarters or on Sundays, he would always lose. It had been laughable.

Now he was leaning back, frowning, his brows furrowed, a crease in his forehead, as he stared at Iago. Solomon was no fool and a far clearer thinker than Parish. I could almost see the gears turning in his head. What was he thinking?

"I'd suggest you get a good night's sleep," Iago finished. "Are there any questions?"

I didn't miss the furious look Parish gave him, a look burning enough to scorch grass. It came as a surprise that Maria was the one to raise her hand. I dragged my gaze from Parish to her slender frame. "So what can we expect?" she asked.

Eria glanced at Iago. He ignored her. "We can't say," he said smoothly. "Tributes and Peacekeepers have gone through this since training became a thing without help. I certainly won't give it to you."

"But you'd give it to Oline, wouldn't you?"

The words were spoken so softly I almost missed them. I whipped around, trying to figure out who had said it. The sentence had not made its way to Iago's ears; he was murmuring quietly to Eria, who, as usual, lit a cigarette. The sickly sweet smell permeated the room. Oline, however, had not gone deaf to the remark. She sat in front of me and glanced back, her green eyes flashing with anger.

"What happened to Emilia?" Parish demanded.

We fell silent. I studied him. He was upset.

"I think we deserve an explanation," Parish added. "So that we might be prepared to start dropping like flies, even though we're so close to the Reaping."

"She died of some illness," Iago lied, giving him a contemptuous look. "She was dead when we found her."

Suddenly I knew that everyone was looking at Saul and I-everyone but Parish, who retained stubborn his position of maintaining eye contact with Iago. Self-conscious, I ducked my head, ears burning. Emilia was dead. I didn't know any more about it than they did.

"I know it's hard," Iago continued, his voice softening. "To be young and in love." He spoke wistfully, lost in nostalgia for a moment. It was the most human I had ever seen him. His eyes grew sad, the lines and pockmarks of his face defined as his mouth drooped into a dismal expression. He nodded to Parish. "And I know what it means to lose that. Oline's mother died when I was twenty-five."

Oline flinched. Evidently it was not a topic she was well-adjusted to discussing.

"That said," he continued, his voice returning to its usual volume, "you can't go around blaming whoever you want just because someone you cared about died. She was faced with an obstacle she wasn't strong enough to get over. It happens." He addressed the rest of us. "You're dismissed."

Eria watched Saul and I go, her eyes boring holes into my back. Saul raised an eyebrow at me. "Well, that was odd," he muttered. "Who knew Roberts had a heart?"

I didn't reply. My mind was already wandering ahead, ready for whatever "training exercise" they had decided for us. The Reaping was only in a few short months. If I wasn't selected as a tribute or Peacekeeper, I was finished. The quarries were dangerous and excellent places to pick up disease. The mines were essentially already crypts, the perfect place to drop over dead. I pictured all the money I would make if I won the Games. Iago and Eria would want me to help with training. Or maybe just Eria; Iago seemed too hateful. He had lied to Parish so deftly it left me envious.

And Emilia, her bloodstained mattress, the sheets dark with death, her eyes open but clouded over, their chocolate irises turned gray. There had been red fingerprints on a bedpost, her own scarlet hand draped beside. Emilia wouldn't be coming to the training exercise, and she would certainly never would become a Peacekeeper or win the Games.

"Shit." Saul had stepped inside the quarters first. "Shit, shit, shit."

"What?"

As if in some kind of trance he had stumbled forward, as if his legs had just been chipped out of a block of ice. I followed him. The curtain had been torn back, revealing her corpse on her bed, which had been stained red completely through.

"Oh my God." And suddenly my hands were shaking uncontrollably. I bent over and retched, my throat and nose burning with acid.

"Get a fucking grip," Saul said, but he was trembling, too. "It's not like we've never seen someone die before."

It was true. We watched the Games on the television when they came on. We'd watched Parish beat the hell out of a boy the year before. And one year we had watched the oldest class-all gone now-train, and a girl had speared another girl through the stomach. We'd even seen the starving children, racked with pneumonia and malnutrition and destined to die in a few weeks, in the poorer sectors of the district, near the quarries and mines. But this was different. This was Emilia.

"What do we do? What-What do we do?"

"Go get the trainers." Saul was thinking clearly. He always had a calm head.

So I had. Quartz and Aleksander were nowhere to be seen, but Eria had been pouring a flask into a cup of coffee, her face haggard and bags under her eyes. Iago had been staring absently at the wall, looking about as awake as Eria. When I swung open the door, their eyes flicked over me. "What's wrong?" Eria had asked, sighing.

"Emilia-" I couldn't form the rest of the sentence.

"Come on," Iago muttered. "Spit it out."

"She's dead!"

Eria swore. Iago stared at him. "What?"

"She's dead!"

"Where?"

"In the quarters."

"Has everyone seen her?"

"No. Ju-Just Saul and me. She's-She's dead."

"Stop throwing a fucking fit," Eria snapped. "You're trying to get in the Games, for God's sake." She took a huge gulp of the concoction in her cup. "Show us."

I led them back to the quarters. Saul hadn't moved from where I'd left him. Eria and Iago exchanged looks before making their way over to her body. He touched his fingers to her neck, checking for a pulse. He muttered something to Eria before raising his voice. "Saul, go to the infirmary and ask for a black bag."

Saul sped off. Eria shook her head. "Bet whoever did this found out about the Peacekeepers."

"You think?" Iago asked, sarcasm ebbing in his voice.

"Wonder how they found out."

"Might've seen a paper. Or just a lucky guess."

I found my voice. "What?"

They looked up, surprised, as if just remembering that I was there. "She was selected by the Peacekeepers," Iago said. He looked over her corpse disdainfully. "Bet she found out from her daddy. Bragged about it. Hell, I'd stick a knife in someone if they did that, too."

"You can't tell anyone that," Eria added to me, in a voice sharper than flint.

"I-I won't." I didn't ask if she meant the Peacekeeper part or Iago stabbing someone for bragging.

"You'd better get a grip, because you and Saul are going to be burying her," said Iago. His steely demeanor was back again. "I'll go get Aleksander and Quartz, they'll need to know about this."

"Bet they'll be happy," Eria commented dryly.

Iago paused at the door. "Yeah, probably," he said softly. Then he turned and left, bumping into Saul, who was coming back inside, a long black bag in his hands, the tail dragging on the floor.

"Are we really burying her?" I burst out.

Eria nodded, lighting a cigarette. "You can't tell anyone about this," she said, looking from Saul to me. "No one. Not even Parish. Especially not Parish. We don't need any loose cannons. Aleksander'll throw a hissy fit when he finds out as it is."

Loose cannons. What the hell did that mean, anyway?

She blew a ring of smoke and sighed. "It's okay to be sad," she said. "I get it. Emilia was your friend. But you can't go around crying in front of everyone. They'll think you're weak. You definitely don't want Aleksander or Quartz to see you sniveling. You'll lose whatever respect they had for you."

I thought of Quartz and Solomon, but I didn't say anything. I mulled over everything I had just witnessed. "So...Emilia has-had-a father?"

Eria sighed and took a drag on her cigarette. "It's complicated."

Emilia Chaney was dead, and I wanted to know why almost as badly as Parish did. That night, when I should have been resting for tomorrow, like everyone else, I had stayed up and stared at the bunk on top of mine. And, farther down the row, I knew Parish was awake, too.


End file.
